README - rss-mcp by veithly

RSS MCP Server

This is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server built with TypeScript. It provides a versatile tool to fetch and parse any standard RSS/Atom feed, and also includes special support for RSSHub feeds. With this server, language models or other MCP clients can easily retrieve structured content from various web sources.

The server comes with a built-in list of public RSSHub instances and supports a polling mechanism to automatically select an available instance, significantly improving the success rate and stability of data retrieval.

✨ Features

Universal Feed Parsing: Fetch and parse any standard RSS/Atom feed from a given URL.
Enhanced RSSHub Support: Provides a tool named get_feed to fetch any RSSHub-supported feed via MCP, with multi-instance support.
Customizable Item Count: Specify the number of feed items to retrieve, with support for fetching all items.
Multi-instance Support: Includes a list of public RSSHub instances and automatically polls to find an available service.
Smart URL Parsing: Supports standard RSSHub URLs and a simplified rsshub:// protocol format.
Priority Instance Configuration: Allows setting a preferred RSSHub instance via the PRIORITY_RSSHUB_INSTANCE environment variable.
Robust Error Handling: If a request to one instance fails, it automatically tries the next one until it succeeds or all instances have failed.
Content Cleaning: Uses Cheerio to clean the feed content and extract plain text descriptions.
Standardized Output: Converts the fetched RSS feed into a structured JSON format.

📦 Installation

First, clone the project repository, then install the required dependencies.

git clone https://github.com/veithly/rss-mcp.git
cd rss-mcp
npm install

🚀 Usage

1. Build the Project

Before running, you need to compile the TypeScript code into JavaScript:

npm run build

2. Run the Server

After a successful build, start the MCP server:

npm start

The server will then communicate with the parent process (e.g., Cursor) via Stdio.

3. Configure a Priority Instance (Optional)

You can create a .env file to specify a priority RSSHub instance. This is very useful for users who have a private, stable instance.

Create a .env file in the project root directory and add the following content:

PRIORITY_RSSHUB_INSTANCE=https://my-rsshub.example.com

The server will automatically load this configuration on startup and place it at the top of the polling list.

🔧 MCP Server Configuration

To use this server with an MCP client like Cursor, you need to add it to your configuration file.

Method 1: Using `npx` (Recommended)

This package is published on npm, so you can use npx to run the server without a local installation. This is the easiest method.

Direct Invocation: You can run the server directly from your terminal using npx:
```
npx rss-mcp
```
MCP Client Configuration: To integrate with an MCP client like Cursor, add the following to your configuration file (e.g., ~/.cursor/mcp_settings.json):
```
{
  "name": "rss",
  "command": ["npx", "rss-mcp"],
  "type": "stdio"
}
```

Method 2: Local Installation

If you have cloned the repository locally, you can run it directly with node.

Clone and build the project as described in the "Installation" and "Usage" sections.
Locate your MCP configuration file.
Add the following server entry, making sure to use the absolute path to the compiled index.js file:
```
{
  "name": "rss",
  "command": ["node", "/path/to/your/rss-mcp/dist/index.js"],
  "type": "stdio"
}
```
Important: Replace /path/to/your/rss-mcp/dist/index.js with the correct absolute path on your system.

After adding the configuration, restart your MCP client (e.g., Cursor) for the changes to take effect. The rss server will then be available, and you can call the get_feed tool.

🛠️ Tool Definition

`get_feed`

Fetches and parses an RSS feed from a given URL. It supports both standard RSS/Atom feeds and RSSHub feeds.

Input Parameters

url (string, required): The URL of the RSS feed to fetch. Two formats are supported:
1. Standard URL: https://rsshub.app/bilibili/user/dynamic/208259
2. rsshub:// protocol: rsshub://bilibili/user/dynamic/208259 (the server will automatically match an available instance)
count (number, optional): The number of RSS feed items to retrieve.
- Default: 1
- Retrieve all: 0

Output

Returns a JSON string containing the feed information, with the following structure:

{
  "title": "bilibili User Dynamics",
  "link": "https://space.bilibili.com/208259",
  "description": "bilibili User Dynamics",
  "items": [
    {
      "title": "[Dynamic Title]",
      "description": "Plain text content of the dynamic...",
      "link": "https://t.bilibili.com/1234567890",
      "guid": "https://t.bilibili.com/1234567890",
      "pubDate": "2024-05-20T12:30:00.000Z",
      "author": "Author Name",
      "category": ["Category1", "Category2"]
    }
  ]
}

📜 Main Dependencies

@modelcontextprotocol/sdk: For building the MCP server.
axios: For making HTTP requests.
rss-parser: For parsing RSS/Atom feeds.
cheerio: For parsing and manipulating HTML content.
date-fns-tz: For handling time-zone-related date formatting.
dotenv: For loading environment variables from a .env file.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the Apache-2.0 License.